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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

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Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#191

Post by IshKebab »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #143
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

There are also an increasing number of services which are ONLY available as apps now, including, but not limited to, many financial apps such as Revolut. A big issue with this trend is that unlike the web, the whole Android ecosystem is a walled garden which is strictly controlled by Google. In principle you can run your own custom Android ROM, but in practice this will lock you out from any app which uses Play Integ…

The worst one is the UK's NHS app, which is only available as an app, despite being just a webview wrapper! I have no idea what they were thinking.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#192

Post by eknkc »

turblety wrote: post #147
zer0zzz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most basic app, a notepad, I often prefer native. When I go between google keep or notion to apple notes I can tell the difference. If the text is long enough, the web apps just can not load the content. Just to confirm: I dumped all of my notes from my insanely large apple notes (about 16000 lines of text) and pasted them into Google Keep, Notion, Google Docs. With the exception of Google Docs the rest of them f…

Sorry, I couldn't recreate this. I just built a tiny texteditor app: https://65cd02a1-8f00-47cb-b1d1-231493de5fc2.paged.net/ Tried putting 20k lines into it. Loaded instantly, allowed me to scroll and edit flawlessly. But I get your point. I'm on a pretty decent 2022 iPhone, and I'm sure at some stage I would run into a performance hit. But not at 20k lines.

Note taking apps generally do formatting, markdown like stuff or at least linking to urls in the text etc.

You cant slap a plain text field and assume that emulates the actual experience in any way.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#193

Post by andelink »

rzz3 wrote: post #182
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Im sorry. I really just can’t understand or relate to this at all. Mobile web still feels like such a terrible experience, and apps generally don’t. When’s the last time you tried booking a flight on mobile web? And how do you deal with all of the real estate the browser steals? Having to log in every time when the app can just cache my authentication and FaceID me?

Not who you replied to, but I more so do not rely on my phone for anything where I would prefer more screen real estate such as doing comparisons like buying flight tickets. I have never bought flight tickets on my phone, only on my computer. I prefer the bigger screen and keyboard for most things actually

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#194

Post by hgomersall »

nxjx wrote: post #186
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_economy Becoming the middle man is the default model that supports scale. No one has come up with anything else to support a world where avg disposable income is close to 0

> Becoming the middle man is the default model that supports rent extraction

FTFY

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#195

Post by elric »

turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

> The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need.

That's exactly the point. More developer control, less user control. Can't change cookie settings in an app, can't (easily) block ads, can't use developer tools to remove annoying UI elements, can't disable phone home mechanics, can't prevent the developer from profiling you.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#196

Post by elric »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #143
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

There are also an increasing number of services which are ONLY available as apps now, including, but not limited to, many financial apps such as Revolut. A big issue with this trend is that unlike the web, the whole Android ecosystem is a walled garden which is strictly controlled by Google. In principle you can run your own custom Android ROM, but in practice this will lock you out from any app which uses Play Integ…

Not only that, but these companies are effectively letting Google decide who they can do business with. It's insane.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#197

Post by wodenokoto »

setopt wrote: post #188
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

> I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. In cases where a native app and web app are both available on iOS, there’s often a huge difference in battery usage and sluggishness. Also, as a sibling poster mentioned, I like having fully “offline” apps as well, for example for maps and notes. I’m not saying that I l…

When the iPhone came out, you had full offline access on PC to Gmail and google docs using Google Gears.

Google Gears got deprecated because something something move to standard HTMl and browser features and now we don’t really have any offline web apps.

The ability to have non sluggish, offline web apps has existed for decades now, but the interest from providers has been declining and the understanding that this is possible is also declining on the consumer side.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#198

Post by elric »

billfruit wrote: post #72

Some apps like Obsidian needs permission to access every file on the device. It is surprising Obsidian isn't getting called out on that very much.

I use Storage Scopes on my GrapheneOS android phone, works great. Can decide exactly which files or folders an app gets to access.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#199

Post by renegat0x0 »

rzz3 wrote: post #182
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Im sorry. I really just can’t understand or relate to this at all. Mobile web still feels like such a terrible experience, and apps generally don’t. When’s the last time you tried booking a flight on mobile web? And how do you deal with all of the real estate the browser steals? Having to log in every time when the app can just cache my authentication and FaceID me?

Not so sure. There are a ton of bad apps. They also do not work properly often.

Besides companies focus on apps, not on web pages. Less money, less focus, therefore worse experience

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#200

Post by wodenokoto »

rzz3 wrote: post #182
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Im sorry. I really just can’t understand or relate to this at all. Mobile web still feels like such a terrible experience, and apps generally don’t. When’s the last time you tried booking a flight on mobile web? And how do you deal with all of the real estate the browser steals? Having to log in every time when the app can just cache my authentication and FaceID me?

Seriously, booking hotels and flights is so much better on the web. You get multiple windows for easy flight and price comparisons, within and between providers.

I don’t understand people who use apps for this. It is such a pain.

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